Applicable for individuals and legal entities, it aims to give participating countries transparency on the financial assets that residents hold offshore.

CRS requires financial institutions to identify customer tax residencies and report to local tax authorities financial accounts held directly or indirectly by foreign tax residents. It also requires those tax authorities (in participating countries) to exchange this information.

More than 100 countries have committed to the standard, including all EU member states and major financial centres around the world. The US hasn’t committed to CRS because it is already obliged to automatically exchange information under pre-existing FATCA inter-governmental agreements.